Following up on yesterday's story about the Maine GOP attacking Maine state Senate candidate Colleen Lachowicz over leading a "double life" in World of Warcraft, Politico has another story featuring Lachowicz's response. Colleen Lachowicz told the publican Thursday night that that the attack shows that the Maine GOP is out-of-touch if they think being a gamer is shameful.

In one of the more unusual attacks on an opponent in this election cycle, the Republican party of Maine has decided that it would be a good idea to take Maine state Senate Democratic candidate Colleen Lachowicz to task for playing World of Warcraft. Apparently they don't know that over 10 million people around the world are playing the game daily, with millions playing here in the United States. The law of averages would also suggest that a fair amount of Maine's population also plays the game, but let's put that aside for now..

While many have been keen to point out the continued decline of Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft subscriber numbers, there's some good news for the company today: the latest expansion has given the game a boost past the 10 million subscriber mark. Back in August Blizzard revealed that its paid subscriber numbers had fallen to 9.1 million.

"It’s been gratifying to see the results of all of the work we put into this expansion and to hear all of the positive feedback from players so far," Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime said.

An analyst at Lazard Capital is telling VentureBeat that early sales indicators on the newest World of Warcraft expansion, Mists of Pandaria, are below expectations. The firm estimates 600-700k copies of the expansion sold at retail since its launch on Tuesday, down a whopping 60 percent from the previous expansion. VentureBeat notes that this estimate probably doesn't take into account digital downloads of the expansion.

This story on Slashdot Games reveals that screenshots taken in World of Warcraft have secret watermarks that can be used by Blizzard to track users - particularly when they are engaged in behavior considered to be illegal or that violates World of Warcraft's terms of service.

The story began a few days ago when a World of Warcraft players noticed that there was an odd mark on a screenshot he had taken in-game:

Blizzard Entertainment has been forced to cut off access to its popular MMO World of Warcraft to subscribers in Iran, due to ongoing (in an earlier version of the story we used the term "new" to describe the trade sanctions, which was not accurate.) U.S. trade sanctions against the country. The company issued the following statement to a thread complaining about World of Warcraft not being available in the region:

Reporting on James Holmes' day in court today, Fox News tries to make a connection to World of Warcraft. We assume this is to tie video games to the shootings in Aurora, Colorado earlier this month, but the connection is about as tenuous as lights over Roswell, New Mexico being definitive proof that extraterrestrials exists...

Holmes was formally charged with 24 counts of murder, 116 counts of attempted murder, one count of possession of explosives, and one count of a crime of violence.

There's probably two lessons to be learned from the following story: don't take video games too seriously and don't engage your neighbor when they are agitated and engaged in an active argument (call the police instead).

World of Warcraft players helped Blizzard raise $330,000 for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. The funds are the result of a charity auction that saw the sale of some retired WOW server hardware put up by Blizzard on eBay earlier this year.

Blizzard Entertainment issued a press release this morning announcing that sales of Diablo III in the first 24 hours totaled 3.5 million copies. They claim, (we assume based on NPD Group numbers), that this makes Diablo III the fastest selling PC game in history. We will not even try to refute that claim. That number does not include the more than 1.2 million players who received Diablo III as part of signing up for the World of Warcraft Annual Pass promotion. Combined that puts Diablo III's first day sales at 4.7 million.

Analyst Colin Sebastian of Robert W. Baird & Co. Incorporated sent out a note this morning to investors of Activision stock saying that they are maintaining a rating of outperform. This rating is based on Activision's latest financial results which were fairly solid thanks to sales of its Skylanders line of toy-game hybrid products for various platforms and continued sales growth in its Call of Duty Elite membership program.

A company called Worlds Inc. has filed a lawsuit against Activision Blizzard for infringing a patent the company holds related to virtual worlds. Let the trolling begin anew. Worlds Inc. claims that the company is violating a patent it holds related to "systems and method for enabling users to interact in a virtual space." The company alleges in its claim that Activision's World of Warcraft and Call of Duty games violate its patents and that it is due compensation for it.

World of Warcraft can help improve cognitive functions in some older adults, according to research conducted by North Carolina State University. Researchers from the University’s Gains Through Gaming laboratory first tested the cognitive functions of study participants ages 60 - 77, to set a baseline. They cataloged data on the subjects' cognitive abilities such as spatial ability, memory and attention focus.

While Blizzard may have lost an estimated 100,000 subscribers in its most recently reported quarter, the good news for the World of Warcraft maker is that the bleeding is now trickling. In the quarter before that Blizzard revealed that it had lost a whopping 800,000 subscribers, so losing 100,000 in the three months ending December 31 seems almost like a reversal of fortune.

Psychiatrist Philip Tam believes internet addiction should be classified as a disorder. The Sydney, Australia based psychiatrist and some Australian parents think that internet addiction and online game addiction need to be officially classified as addictions so that children can be treated for the so-called disorders.

Blizzard Entertainment President Mike Morhaime has apologized for the video clip that ran during the final performance at BlizzCon. That video clip featured comments from George Fisher of Cannibal Corpse talking about the game, and using a number of homophobic slurs. He also performed at BlizzCon as part of the Blizzard rock group Level 90 Elite Tauren Chieftain. Morhaime, who is also a member of that group, threw himself on his sword in a letter to GayGamer.

The closing performance at BlizzCon 2011 by Level 90 Epic Tauren Chieftain has drawn strong criticism from gay and lesbian advocacy group GLAAD. The performance featured an opening video from guest singer George 'Corpseater' Fisher of the metal band Cannibal Corpse. In the video he talks about how much he hates Alliance using strong anti-gay language that we can't repeat here. While most of the foul language was censored in the video, those who saw it knew exactly what he was saying.

Blizzard Entertainment will host a series of special charity auctions featuring server-blade hardware that was originally used during the early days of World of Warcraft. The money generated from the auctions will go to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, one of the world's premier centers for the research and treatment of pediatric cancer and other catastrophic childhood diseases. The auction consists of the original HP Blade System servers that once housed hundreds of different realms across North America and Europe.

Blizzard Entertainment announced that its virtual pet sale has raised more than $1.9 million for Japan's earthquake relief efforts. Thanks to the generosity of World of Warcraft players, around the world who purchased the in-game pet, the Cenarion Hatchling, the company has managed to raise nearly $2 million for continued efforts to help those in Japan affected by earthquakes and tsunamis that hit the country earlier this year. More from Blizzard:

Blizzard Entertainment announced that its new World of Warcraft feature, Real ID Party, is now available for public testing. According to Blizzard this feature allows World of Warcraft players to invite their Real ID friends of the same faction to a party regardless of the realm they play on, and then queue up for a 5-player normal or Heroic dungeon.

Blizzard also sent along a handy dandy mini-FAQ, which you can read below. For even more information on this feature, check out the Battle.net Real ID.

While World of Warcraft isn't going to free -to-play any time soon, Blizzard is taking steps to open it up to more people by creating an "unlimited trial period." And by unlimited they mean you can play it as long as you want without paying up to level 20. Anyone signing up for a free trial can now play the game indefinitely, though players cap out at level 20. That might seem like a big deal until you consider that, with all the latest expansions, you can play the game up until level 85. Trial restrictions still apply, of course.

Blizzard more than likely adjusted its trial period - which used to be ten days - to draw in more subscribers. The company has slowly been losing subscribers over the last year and it is trying to come up with new ways to reel current and new subscribers in. While the new trial is one way to do that, the company also said that it is trying to shorten the time period between expansions to keep players engaged.

In a recent interview with Gamasutra, Trion senior VP of publishing David Reid said that he knows why Blizzard lost 600,000 subscribers - detailed in Activision's most recent earnings call: because of his company's new MMO Rift. Rift recently hit its one million games sold milestone, and according to Reid, this has a lot to do with the decline in World of Warcraft subscriptions.

"We're really pleased with what we're seeing," said Reid. "And beyond that, it was a pleasure to see that in the latest Activision Blizzard earnings call, they inquired about Rift when Blizzard announced that their subscriber numbers went from 12 million to 11.4 million."

"You can do some math... We know very well where those 600,000 people are," he added.

Adding to the debate on this story about 15 percent of divorces filed via UK-based Divorce Online being related to online gaming and game addiction, Eurogamer picks apart the numbers in this story.

That study conducted by Divorce Online suggested that 15 percent of divorces filed with the company are a result of video game addiction - usually World of Warcraft or Call of Duty. But a deeper look at the methodology, the actual numbers, and what is required to file a divorce in the UK paints a slightly different picture.

Divorce Online, a website dedicated to getting rid of that dead weight in your marriage, claims that 15 percent of the divorces it has handled can be attributed to spouses that are addicted to online games such as world of Warcraft and Call of Duty.

According to a press release issued by Divorce Online, an examination of 200 unreasonable behavior petitions filed by women using its service between January - April of this year found that 15 percent complained that their husbands were happier playing video games than they were paying attention to them. They called their "gaming addiction" an unreasonable behavior that lead to the divorce they were seeking.

The release also offers comments from one disgruntled 21-year-old wife from London named Jessica Ellis, 24, who married husband Michael in 2008.

Blizzard Entertainment posted a reminder on Battle.net that tickets for its annual fanfest, BlizzCon, will go on sale this weekend. The very first round of tickets will go on sale Saturday, May 21 at 10 a.m. PT through the online Blizzard Store. If you intend on attending the event, you'd better act fact because these tickets tend to sell out very quickly.

A second round of tickets will go on sale Wednesday, May 25 at 7 p.m. PT. Tickets for the special pre-BlizzCon charity dinner to benefit the Children's Hospital of Orange County will go on sale Saturday, May 28 at 10 a.m. PT.

For more details on all the activities planned for this year's BlizzCon, check out www.blizzcon.com.

During its post-earnings call this week, Activision blizzard revealed that World of Warcraft subscriptions are down by about five percent. In October 2010, the popular MMORPG had around 12 million subscribers. Now the game enjoys about 11.4 million subscribers. To deal with the drop off, Blizzard's president Michael Morhaime said that the company has to release future expansion packs in a more timely fashion to contain player drop-off.

"As our players have become more experienced playing World of Warcraft over many years, they have become much better and much faster at consuming content," said Blizzard president Michael Morhaime during a conference call. "And so I think with Cataclysm they were able to consume the content faster than with previous expansions, but that's why we're working on developing more content."

iPhone and Android phone users can take Blizzard's World of Warcraft Remotes service for a test drive. Blizzard is offering a week-long free trial of the service beginning today but it is only offering it (initially anyway) for the most popular Mobile operating systems.

World of Warcraft Remotes cost $2.99 per month and lets users control a couple of in-game functions. Remote Auction House lets users check on active auctions, allowing them to bid, buy and create auctions, and more. It also provides notifications for those more important auction activities and allows you to renew those expired auction offerings. The second part of Remotes is Remote Guild Chat, which obviously lets you chat with your mates without actually being logged into the game.

Shout box

Infophile: @Matt: Apparently Dan Aykroyd actually is involved. We don't know how yet, though, but he's apparently going to be in the movie in some way.08/02/2015 - 4:17am

Mattsworkname: I still hold that not having the origonal cast invovled in any way hurts this movie, and unless the 4 actresses in the lead roles can some how measure up to the comic timing of the origonal cast, i just don't see it being a success08/02/2015 - 12:46am

Mattsworkname: Mecha: regardless of what you think of it, GB 2 was a finanical success and for it time did well with audiances ,even if it wasnt as popular as the first08/02/2015 - 12:45am

MechaTama31: I think they're better off trying to do something different, than trying to be exactly the same and having every little difference held up as a shortcoming. Uncanny valley.08/01/2015 - 11:57pm

MechaTama31: Having the original cast didn't do much for... that pink-slimed atrocity which we must never speak of.08/01/2015 - 11:56pm

Mattsworkname: Andrew: If the new ghostbusters bombs, I cant help but feel it'll be cause it removed the origonal cast and changed the formula to much08/01/2015 - 8:31pm

Andrew Eisen: Not the best look but that appears to be a PKE meter hanging from McCarthy's belt.08/01/2015 - 7:34pm

Mattsworkname: You know what game is a lot of fun? rocket league. It' s a soccer game thats actually fun to play cause your A Freaking CAR!08/01/2015 - 7:02pm

Mattsworkname: Nomad colossus did a little video about it, showing the world and what can be explored in it's current form. It's worth a look, and he uses text for commentary as not to break the immerison08/01/2015 - 5:49pm

Mattsworkname: I feel some more mobility would have made it more interesting and I feel that a larger more diverse landscape with better graphiscs would help, but as a concept, it interests me08/01/2015 - 5:48pm

Andrew Eisen: Huh. I guess I'll have to check out a Let's Play to get a sense of the game.08/01/2015 - 5:47pm

Mattsworkname: It did, I found the idea of exploring a world at it's end, exploring the abandoned city of a disappeared alien race and the planets various knooks and crannies intriqued me.08/01/2015 - 5:46pm

Andrew Eisen: Did it appeal to you? If so, what did you find appealing?08/01/2015 - 5:43pm

Mattsworkname: Its an interesting concept, but it's not gonna appeal to everyone thats for sure,08/01/2015 - 5:40pm

Andrew Eisen: That sounds horrifically boring. Doesn't sound like an interesting use of its time dilation premise either. 08/01/2015 - 5:36pm

Mattsworkname: an observer , seeing this sorta frozen world and being able to explore without any restriction other then time. no enimes, no threats, just the chance to explore08/01/2015 - 5:34pm